Hey Mr. Rain: It's Pouring Velvet Underground books

I can't say why there have been two landmark books about the Velvet Underground published in the last few months but I can say boy does it make me happy. Richie Unterberger's train-spottingly in depth White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day By Day is the book I've been waiting for for years. On the other hand, Jim DeRogatis and friends full color, densely-packed ephemera and photo-filled The Velvet Underground: An Illustrated History, is the book I didn't even know I was missing until I bought it yesterday. Between these two hefty works this is the most important time in VU scholarship since the days of Phil Milstein and MC Kostek's "What Goes On" fanzine three decades ago. And that's not to mention a book called The Velvet Underground that Amazon has down for an October release and describes as "A definitive anthology of unseen photographs, posters, and rare ephemera documenting the influence of this legendary band."

You won't get me to chose between the two. I''m learning more about the Velvets from Unterberger's 368 page (small print!) tome while (it's taking me a while to digest all the information), while I learned more about Velvets visual history from DeRogatis' coffee table book. Day By Day is image packed too, but An Illustrated History looks to have access to the Andy Warhol Archives in Pittsburgh and other private collections, re-printing among many other things, Lou Reed's manuscript, with chords and lyrics, to Heroin; dozens of ads for albums and concerts, ticket stubs, and a bigger collection of posters than I'd ever seen since, well, VU Day by Day.